PERFORMANCE
"QUEENS OF BEDLAM "

The performance took place during the Bangkok Biennale / Beyond Bliss — "Ecstasy of Truth" exhibition opening night, Sathorn 11 art space, Bangkok, 2018.

 

"The Queens of Bedlam" (performance with an element of interactive theater).

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"Being a woman in the 18th - 19th century was truly dreadful. That was a man's world; women had no rights or voice in it. There were many cases when a man got tired of his wife; he could find an excuse and send her to Bedlam, a mental asylum. Any psychiatric institution of those days was full of women; a lot of them were absolutely sane before they got into the hands of the "doctors". After all the cruelty they went through, they stayed mentally disabled forever." — Olga Volodina, interview for Cult Potato, Medium, 2018.

 

The performance draws attention to this dark fact of history and has an element of interactivity. Few know that Bedlam was also one of London's most popular tourist attractions. Visitors paid for admission — sometimes a penny, sometimes more — to observe the patients as if they were theatre performers. They poked them with sticks, hurled insults, and laughed at their suffering. The hospital earned up to £450 a year from these 'viewings', while staff took bribes for private access to cells. For nearly two centuries, human madness was sold as public entertainment, second in popularity only to St Paul's Cathedral.

This performance recreates a suppressed chapter of women's history: when independence was diagnosed as madness, suffering was sold for the price of a ticket, and the female body was turned into public spectacle. It is not a theatrical effect. It is a reminder of what feminists fought for — and what rights they won.

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Artist: Olga Volodina

Video: Morten Lovechild

Music: Paolo Tognola

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Actors: Toma Morozova, Olga Andrievskaya, Claudia Liu, Антон Патриника, Zarish Ali,

Anastasia Maslova

 

Hair and MUA: Meena Vongsurakrai, Suthira Meier, Gybbiiz Akanittaporn, Vladi Greenkoff, Pakara Pitipathomsin, Еника Стрелка

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